Solid Ink

It's time to rethink your ink

News and Reviews

Publication

Quote/Award

Date

BERTL

Xerox-proprietary solid ink technology received the 2011 BERTL's Best award for Best Eco-Friendly Ink Technology. With solid ink's cartridge-free design and minimal packaging, there is less to manufacture, no empty toner cartridges to dispose of or recycle, and less storage space required than comparable laser devices. In fact, solid ink printers and multifunction printers produce 90 percent less waste during use than comparable laser devices.

History

1946

Tektronix is founded in 1946 in Portland, Oregon. In addition to oscilloscopes, logic analysers and video testing equipment, they make imaging and printing technologies.

1986

Tektronix embarks on a journey to solve the number one customer complaint about colour printing: high page costs.

1986-1991

Tektronix experiments with thermal inkjet with aqueous (water-based) ink limitations, and Piezo inkjet, which was the basis of the Solid Ink waterless inkjet technology and causes fewer issues like show-through or paper curl.

History

1991

Tektronix launches its first Solid Ink product: Tektronix Phaser III. It prints about 1 page per minute in brilliant, graphic arts-quality colour and is wildly successful.

1999

Tektronix conceptualises its first tabloid/A3-size Solid Ink product.

2000

Xerox acquires the Colour Printing and Imaging Division of Tektronix.

History

2005

The first letter-sized/A4 Solid Ink multifunction printer, the WorkCentre C2424, enters the marketplace.

2007

Xerox introduces the Phaser 8860 Solid Ink printer, which produces colour pages for the same price as black and white.

2009

The world’s first tabloid/SRA3-sized Solid Ink multifunction printer, the ColorQube 9200 series, enables flexible pricing plans so customers don’t pay a lot for a little colour on a page.

History

Present

More than 1 million Solid Ink machines are in use today, serving thousands of customers who produce more than 6 billion pages each year. Every year, Xerox works to lower running costs while improving performance and quality. Although Solid Ink technology was originally developed for the graphic arts market, it quickly appealed to general office users because of its simplicity and ease of use for everyone.

Once the Solid Ink sticks are in the machine, the true alchemy happens.

The Solid Ink printing process works similar to a mini offset press and consistently prints vibrant images on virtually any paper, including recycled paper.

Preparing to Print

The long-life maintenance roller quickly applies a microscopic layer of silicone oil to the heated drum for reliable ink release.

Advantages:

A simple, robust, reliable printing mechanism.

Maintenance roller lasts tens of thousands of pages and only needs to be replaced a few times during the printer’s life.

No other complex consumables.

Single Pass Imaging

Next, the full-width printhead applies all of the colours at the same time on the rotating drum.

Advantages:

High-speed image transfer.

Eliminates misregistration of colours.

Image Transfer

A sheet of paper is rapidly fed between the drum and a transfix roller, transferring the ink to the paper.

Advantages:

Speed and high reliability.

No fuser required.

Great print quality on a wide variety of papers – even recycled paper.

Ink Bonding

As the ink on the drum transfers to the paper, it penetrates the paper’s fibres, but without the spreading of liquid inkjets or the toner scattering of laser. The ink cools and solidifies immediately, forming a strong, permanent bond to the paper. Total time for the print process: as little as 5 seconds.

Advantages:

Colourfast printing: no drying time or smearing.

More consistent colour quality on a wider range of media than liquid inkjet or colour laser.

Two-sided printing

The sheet of paper is not fully ejected into the exit tray but is fed back into the printer through the duplex paper path. The print process repeats with the second image on the drum transferred to the other side of the sheet of paper.

Advantages:

A short duplex paper path means faster two-sided printing.

Fewer paper jams.

No additional paper tray required.

Reloading

The ink loader draws ink from Solid Ink sticks instead of a self-contained toner cartridge. Ink can be replaced or added at any time.

Some solid ink products have been shown to have a lower total lifetime energy investment than comparable laser printing devices. Total lifetime energy includes the energy invested over the printer's life cycle in raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, customer use, and end-of-life disposition.

Saving paper

GreenPrint software comes bundled for free with Solid Ink printers. It automatically detects unnecessary pages, such as those with only a web address, and lets you select the pages you need to print, helping you reduce paper and ink usage.

Print more colour for less

"The (Solid Ink) writing system is much less complicated compared to Xerography with fewer moving components and fewer replaceable supplies, which translates to the potential for lower overall operating costs."

If you print lots of colour pages, Xerox solid ink printers and multifunction printers can help you realise a significant savings on 70% of the colour pages you print every day. You get exceptional value, with a total cost of ownership that's hard to beat.

We offer two ways to save money on colour printing, depending on which Solid Ink printer model you choose.

If you like the simplicity of metered billing, then the Hybrid Colour Plan is for you. It classifies documents based on the actual amount of colour used. You'll no longer pay full-colour prices for low-colour documents.

Typical office document colour distribution
Office colour documents can be classified by the amount of colour used. According to Xerox research, the breakdown of colour documents in a typical office environment is:

Typical office document colour distribution
Office colour documents can be classified by the amount of colour used. According to Xerox research, the breakdown of colour documents in a typical office environment is:

Typical office document colour distribution
Office colour documents can be classified by the amount of colour used. According to Xerox research, the breakdown of colour documents in a typical office environment is:

Ease of Use

See how ColorQube wows the printing industry. (available in English only)

With Solid Ink printers, there are no big, bulky print cartridges, or fusers, fuser oil or imaging units like you would find in a typical colour laser printer.

Besides Solid Ink sticks, the only other replaceable item is a maintenance roller/cleaning unit, which lasts for tens of thousands of pages and only needs to be replaced a few times throughout the life of your device. You can replace this yourself without making a service call, unlike many laser printer parts.

Print Quality

Solid Ink prints vivid, vibrant colour on every document, every day.

Each Solid Ink stick is quality checked to ensure consistent colour, and the printing process delivers a more consistent dot shape to the page.

Solid Ink fills the gaps in paper or printing media to create a new surface. That's why it prints well even on inexpensive and recycled papers.

With Solid Ink, you can:

Print a wider range of colours than with most laser printers.

Produce the smoothest blends and gradientseven tricky mid-tones like sky and skin.

Because Solid Ink is not water-based:

There's no drying time.

There's no thin media show-through or media curl.

It's not affected by temperature and humidity.

It doesn't require intense heat during the printing process.

High-quality colour matching tools ensure accuracy:

Colour by Words, available on some models, lets you choose colour modifications from an easy drop-down list.

"Print quality produced from Xerox's solid ink technology is very good and the engine technology is quite reliable. In fact, one of the advantages that Xerox has over its liquid ink competitors is the fact that solid ink technology already has a proven track record in the workgroup environment."